Rating: 
Summary: Those who persevere with this will be rewarded BIG TIME...
Review: "Mane of Chaos...Anomander Rake. Lord of the black-skinned Tiste Andii...who has looked down on a hundred thousand winters, Who has tasted the blood of dragons, who leads the last of his kind, seated in the Throne of Sorrow and a kingdom tragic and fey...a kingdom with no land to call its own." - Steven Erikson, Gardens of the MoonSo Steven Erikson introduces one of his major characters. This series is quite simply outstanding, grandiose, magnificent - the word epic is often used as a cliche but if ever a series is worthy of being called that, this is it. It's staggering in its scope. Erikson's narrative style is to throw you in the thick of the action with minimal background information. This can be quite disconcerting when starting this book - you just don't, and won't, know what the hell's going on. You won't understand how magic works, what a Warren is, where the Malazan empire actually is and what the hell is a Tiste Andii anyway?? It'll be like that for the first hundred pages or so. Keep up or be left behind. You'll find yourself rereading various passages, trying to glean some tiny seed of understanding. It can be pretty frustrating, not knowing a damn thing about anything. But Erikson gives you enough teasing glimpses of quality under the survace for you to feel that understanding is just around the corner if you keep perservering with it, even if you don't initially understand what's going on - Erikson's world is incredibly rich in detail and history, and this is slowly revealed as you get further into the book. And the more this world - and the storyline set in this world - is revealed the more and more impossible it gets to put the book down. The originality is quite amazing, and it's a MAJOR rush when you start to piece things together. Everything starts to fall into place. It's called approaching comprehension - and it creeps up on you, till you get to the last page of the book and realise that you can't wait to go back to the bookstore to get the second in the series, Deadhouse Gates, just so that you can find out more about this world and the people who live in it. Then when you finish that you'll want to get the third, Memories of Ice. And the fourth, House of Chains. And the fifth, Midnight Tides. And so on and so on...and the best thing? It gets better and better and better as you get deeper into the series - if ever there's a world and a series to lose yourself in, it's this one. Not only that, the rereadability quality of this series is amazing - better than anything else I've read before. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: The beginning of the best fantasy series
Review: Before telling you my opinion about the book, I'd like to adress some issues that amazed me when reading some of the reviews here.
First, the notion that nothing is ever explained in the book. True but that's one of the best things in the series. Erikson trusts his readers to be intelligent enough to find the truth (if there is such because every character sees it differently) themselves, not spoon-feed them with the factology. You won't see a certain character explaining to another for example what's a warren, just like you won't see anyone explaining to somebody what's a radio in our world. A lot more things make sense after you have read the next books and then reread "Gardens...". Hints are being dropped left, right and center and details that are just confusing the first time around become vital in the reread. It's one of the best series, if you, like me love to read your favorite books over and over again. Secondly, yes it could be a confusing book and it's has some inconsistancies wth the latter volumes because it was written nearly ten years prior to "Deadhouse Gates" (the second book). Yes, it has a bit too many interventions from Deus Ex Machina but trust me things get much better in the next books in that department. The Malazan series has so many characters that you can hardly expect all of them to have depth but those of them who have more screen time like Paran are well developed and the minor ones if not anything else, at least do not annoy the reader unlike those from the Wheel of Time. There are a lot of super powerful beings in the series but in a way they counter each other and the balance is kept, thus a lot of them use humans and subtle tricks to complete their goals, it's not as if battles of anihilation between gods and the likes rage all the time.
The strenghts of the book - very original concepts, a huge and very well developed world with ancient history, complicated multi-layered plot, interesting battle scenes. Ability to use language in a way some other fantasy authors are hardly aware that it existed *cough* Eddings *cough*. The perfect series for everyone not afraid to use his brain while reading fantasy and tired of all the stupid genre cliches.
Rating: 
Summary: So epic the characters aren't realistic.
Review: Erikson avoids the slow introductory phase in most fantasy by omitting it completely. "Gardens of the Moon" begins in the middle of the war, with little hint of why the war started. Mages hurl bolts of energy with no explanation of the magic system save the power sources called "Warrens," dimensional rifts that cleverly take the characteristics of each type of power. The pace thankfully quickens once the action moves to Darujhistan, then slows with divine meddling outside the city. The endgame occurs in the deliciously subtle setting of a masquerade party, but the conclusion resolves only one plot thread.
"Gardens" moves through several dozen point-of-view characters, but this scope leaves some major ones ignored. Whiskeyjack is absent for a hundred pages after the first sections. After being featured in the first chapters, Paran is absent for two hundred pages in the middle. With demigods scheming and gods walking in a mortal's dreams, the human characters feel insignificant. Their actions don't hold much weight when demigods wield soul-stealing swords and dead human characters are brought back to life by sorcery or divine will.
Most of these myriad characters are vividly drawn, especially the jester Kruppe. Only a few have interesting motivations, such Whiskeyjack's angst about the war and Rake's concern for his people. Except for Paran's conclusion and a thief who falls in love, no character develops through the novel. They scheme and react, they fight, they die and come back from the dead, but they never grow.
The Malazan saga invites comparison with the current master of epic fantasy, George R. R. Martin, especially since Erikson's publisher Tor compares them in their own press release. Although equally epic and detailed as Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire," Gardens falls far short of Martin's work in believability and characterization. Martin's characters are all realistically drawn; they grow and change. In the absence of meddling gods, their actions have consequences and their deaths are final. Erikson's characters are flat and the humans' actions ring hollow.
Despite this, "Gardens of the Moon" still outpaces almost all other current fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: To put it simply - fabulous
Review: Erikson creates a world of such rich content, that one book is insufficient to hold in all of it. To a certain extent, many fantasy creations feel spare - the writer creates the present story, but the past is nearly absent. Not Erikson - the ancient history which gives the book it's scope logically influences the present situation, in matters great and small. And the characters ... ah, the characters are a pleasure to behold. Cynical and idealistic, brave or pragmatically cowardly, they feel very much alive. I strongly recommend this book who enjoys storytelling which draws you in deeper and deeper.
Rating: 
Summary: Numbingly complex military-fantasy
Review: Gardens of the Moon is Steven Erikson's debut fantasy novel and the first of a projected ten--yep, ten--book saga from saga-happy publishing titan Tor. Because of its scope, it's also a hard book to review. The word "epic" has been thrown around to describe it, and perhaps it's an appropriate one: the book displays both the strengths and weaknesses of a fantasy tale that spans centuries and planes of existence.
The strengths: Erikson displays a prodigious imagination and broadly constructed world; GOTM is indeed a good example of world-building. Some aspects of his magic system and assortment of enchanted objects feel fresh, as does the creation of a city illuminated by natural gas.
The weaknesses: As might be expected with a new novelist, Erikson's storytelling ability lags behind his imagination. The most glaring problem is that he can't seem to decide whether to tell the story from multiple, limited points of view (as George Martin does so well in "A Game of Thrones") or from an omniscient perspective. More often than not, he seems to settle for the latter--which has the consequence of distancing the reader from the characters. With so many characters in play, this proves to be a nearly fatal flaw. I found it incredibly difficult to relate to any of the characters; the soliders and assassins blurred together, and few motivations and biographies came to light. Often, simple clarity--where are they now? is this before or after that?--was lacking and jerked me right out of the story.
Speaking of, there's much less actual story than the book's density would lead you to believe. An empire is trying to conquer a wealthy city on another continent, and a broad array of warriors, assassins, sorcerers, politicans, and--most intrusively--gods factor into the conflict, plotting and scheming away. Yet, for all the surface action, the shallow characterization mentioned above never quite pulled me in and inspired me to care about the story. I often felt as if I were reading an incredibly detailed, turn-by-turn account of an intense and long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign--something intimidating and inaccessible to outsiders, with minimal emotional payoff. Some will praise GOTM for 'allowing' the reader to figure out some things for him or herself, and that can certainly be a valid praise for a book (e.g. for "The Briar King" by Greg Keyes or anything by Patricia McKillip). In this case, though, the lack of explanation and clarity seemed less than intentional on the author's part. (And a final, minor irritation: though Stephen Youll's cover is eyecatching, I have no idea how it relates to the story or who the two warriors are supposed to be. The title is tangential, as well. Such is marketing, I guess, in this age of ten-plus book trilogies ...)
In a nutshell, GOTM was tolerable. And to be fair to Mr. Erikson, it was first published in England in 1999, and the standards for the genre may have changed in the past five years. However, this note from Terry Brooks in "The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference" may have proved instructive: "The temptation to free-fall through a story chock full of incredible images and wondrous beings can be irresistible--but, when not resisted, almost invariably disastrous."
GOTM isn't disastrous, but I can't recommend buying it or committing to another nine servings. Recommended as a used-purchase for fans of military fantasy or a library loan for general fantasy readers. Two-and-a-half blood-red stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice beginning, if a bit thin on character
Review: Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon (Bantam, 1999)
Steven Erikson began his massive, seemingly unending Malazan Book of the Fallen series with Gardens of the Moon, a nine-hundred-plus page monstrosity published to some acclaim in Britain, but not on this side of the pond until 2004. This created almost a Cult of Erikson in the States, where its devotees, who often paid insane prices for imported mass-market paperbacks, watched us getting all het up over George R. R. Martin, Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, et. al., and gloated to themselves, knowing they had the real goods. Then came June 2004, and for the first time, Steven Erikson's Malazan books started being released domestically.
In all honesty, while Gardens of the Moon doesn't have the stature (or resultant epic feel) of George R. R. Martin's truly never-ending A Song of Ice and Fire, it certainly does the trick well enough with this opening shot. To try and recount the many pieces of plot in a thousand-word review would be to demean the complexity and richness of the book. Just get it and read it for yourself.
Erikson's characters are sometimes shallower than I'd like, but allowances must be made for this being, in essence, a book of setup; the characters do need room to expand. That said, he fills in a good deal on major and minor characters alike, and the novel does have enough characterization that the whole massive tome isn't just advancing the subplot that drives this first novel.
The second book, Deadhouse Gates, is slated to be released in America in February 2005. Read this one before then so you don't get behind. *** ½
Rating:
Summary: Judge a book by its UK cover
Review: the cover by steven youll is so bad. the original for this book isnt the greatest either..but the UK covers for the rest of the series are Awesome. especially Deadhouse Gates. which im reading now. and im likin it a lot.
this series seems so different from other fantasy. i dont know why. im sure people would disagree, but to me it just seems so much more original than most of the stuff out there. the main thing is probably the bizarre names of people and places. definitely a different flavor. instead of some medieval english landscape, the names make me picture a parched middle east with maybe occasional oasis. haha. i dont know how much names matter to anyone, its just something that i notice.
the magic is interesting, very mysterious because Erikson doesnt cover it a whole lot. its not as cool and dark and mysterious as Martin's magic tho.
the sense of vast history, layer upon layer, adds dimension.
another thing that i think makes me like this series is whats called ethos. credibility. i read Erikson's biography before i started the series. you know he's an anthropologist and archaeologist? that definitely adds a sense of credibility to his imagination. his creation of civilizations and histories. He's also a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. so that kinda backs up his writing, which i think is pretty good. sometimes it gets a bit muddled, but whose doesnt?
one bad thing now...
i still love this book and series! do not get me wrong. but i didnt feel for the characters like in other series'. ofcourse i identified a little with the few young men discovering the world and who they are blah blah blah. other than that i was just like, o that character is a Badass, and hes cool as hell! kruppe was probably my favorite character.
but again, this 'con' didnt really take away from my enjoyment. i really want to keep that clear.
i think this may just be the fantasy author/series ive been waiting for...alongside george martin, michael moorcock, gene wolfe, dan simmons, robert jordan, etc etc. yaaaaa its hard to narrow down to one...haha
and like one other guy mentioned, i DEFINITELY recommend this over a book by Anyone named Terry! hahahaha Yes.
Rating:
Summary: Great Story!!
Review: The first book is the start to an amazingly complex storyline. Erikson does some pretty interesting things with his use of magic. The characters are pretty good, better than most in fantasy, besides George R R Martin. The style of writing could have been better but the author really seems to find his voice in the second book Deadhouse Gates. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Gardens of the Moon
Review: This book was a big disappointment. The author has excellent technical writing skills which I feel were wasted on a plot which was trite at best and incoherent at worst. The characters were predictable and shallow - by the end of the book I was so bored and annoyed I didn't care if any of them lived or died.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This is a fantastic book and a wonderfull beginning to series which just keeps getting better and better. This book is extremely well written, with interesting and believable characters which are a step(or three!) above the usual fantasy fare. The complex narrative may be too much for some, but stick with it and you will be rewarded with possibly one of the best series of recent times. But the best thing about Erikson's work is how fast he writes, since the series debut, he has put out at least one book every year! Take that Robert Jordan!
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